It's been an interesting few weeks since The Whicharts came back from the printer and went out to the readers. I'm pleased that people want to read it and I was certainly nervous about their reactions. People have been kind enough to email lovely comments about the book, the design and thanks for bringing it back into print. That's why I'm here really, to thank everyone who has helped me become a publisher and bookseller.

I think it's a fascinating book about 1920s London and I'm quite happy to read The Whicharts and Ballet Shoes as completely different books - reading one doesn't spoil the other for me. Noel Streatfeild had quite a success with The Whicharts and I don't suppose she would be known as the author of so many classic books for children without it. That said, there is a real contrast between her books for children and adults. Much of her adult fiction is considerably darker in tone than the bright, positive The Painted Garden and Ballet Shoes, though these books weren't reprinted quite so often.

As someone who sympathised with Petrova in Ballet Shoes, but laughed to hear of her sending her scholarship student (Mark - Curtain Up) a screwdriver as a present as they were always useful, I think it's interesting to see a version of her three sisters grow up.

Margin Notes Books

Well, this is me: Margin Notes Books. A publisher, book-hunter and reader. Anyone who knows me or my book collection knows that I'm the last person to write in the margins (unless it was a University set text and in pencil only), but that I like reading old gift inscriptions, school prize labels and finding oddments inside my secondhand books.

As a publisher I've just reissued Noel Streatfeild's The Whicharts as it's a novel I think that deserves to be read outside a copyright library reading room. The site will be updated with more information and links to useful articles and websites as I collect and publish them.

http://www.marginnotesbooks.com/whicharts.html